Yowzers! There Be Dragons!

By Paisley HibouQuailBellMagazine.com

If you didn't know any better, you might mistake this slumbering iguana for a fire-breathing dragon poised to feast on the bones of brave (and not-so-brave) knights...as soon as he wakes up from his nap.

When looking at today's lizards--especially the bigger ones--it's not so difficult to imagine how the men and women of yesteryear might have developed dragon myths. Dragon myths probably helped early Europeans explain the dinosaur bones they occasionally found, as well as the reptiles brought back from Asian trade expeditions.

So lizards, dragons, and dinosaurs really aren't that far removed from each other, at least to the common eye. Otherwise ask the movie crew on Don Chaffey's One Million Years B.C. If you weren't too busy staring at Raquel Welch in her fur bikini, you might have noticed that the film's biologist calls a supersized iguana a "tyrannosaur." Sad even for a non-paleotologist? Yes.